The Pasture That Has Everything

    One neighbor.  That’s all we have.  We’re like Vatican City, a neighborhood of our own surrounded by everything else.

    The “everything else” in this case is a huge pasture belonging to our neighbor.  It happened that way because our neighbor moved this house to the site back in the 70’s when he was first married. 

      When his father died, his mother moved into town, and he and his family moved to the parent’s vacated home.  His house is on the north end of the mile long pasture, our home, on the south end.

      The pasture is a source of lots of things:  like firewood, for example.

     Wild life, like pack rats (here they may collect unmolested, at least by humans or their pets),

    

     Electric power for Midwest Energy (ours comes from the local REA coop)

     Yucca (better known as soapweed in this country)

     A little running water, most years,

      And a spring,

    There’s mystery and tragedy,

       Mile makers on the road to progress,

      This benchmark shows the elevation.  The actual numbers are hard to read, but I believe they say 3000 feet above sea level.

      Our house is built on the west side of an old road bed, the former route of Kansas Highway 25.  The road bed is grassed over but the bed and the ditches remain.

    Varied scenery includes rock formations,

     An old homestead,

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     And some great views.

     When we first lived there, we rented our house.  I had time to take a Sunday afternoon walk.  Now, I spend most of my outdoor time working on the house.  Firewood provides the only excuse to make a pasture visit.  The old truck and the buzzing chainsaw dispel the notion that you have stepped back 200 years into the past.

Rat Addendum

     A private investigator showed up this week.  She found the story of the rat dissatisfyingly unfinished.

     It was planned to be just a vacation, a time for a little R & R while the bureaucrats in charge of her department were off gallivanting around.  And that’s how it started, as a vacation.

      However, her investigative nature soon overcame the need for relaxation, and she dug right in.

     The weather didn’t cooperate.  The trail was obfuscated by a lot of snow, necessitating time off for tool cleanup.

      Other impediments included the poor support staff, no investigative lab out here in the sticks, only some dullard standing around in the snow with a point and shoot.

     But eventually, the help came round, and the weather did warm up.  The investigation revealed a den of iniquity in the bushes.  With shovel, hoe, and pruning shears,

a sizable amount of evidence began to pile up.  (Don’t stand behind the PI with unbuckled overboots.  The rat’s nest will soon be keeping your shoes, socks, and pant cuffs company.)

       Shucks, dry hole.  Someone tipped the rats off and they weren’t home.  Oh well.  Time to cool off and make a snow angel or two before the snow completely disappears.   

    Back to work.  To find another lead, quite a bit of evidence had to be turned over.

      But at last, pay dirt!  His nest overturned, the rat ducked and dodged through the woodpile, a scene reminiscent of a two-legged detective pursuing a bad guy through an abandoned factory or warehouse in New York City.  (The cameraman couldn’t keep up.)

       Finally, by using a metal rod, the inept help managed to dislodge the criminal from a chink in the woodpile.  Not far, but just enough to enable Bella to make the grab.

     Unfortunately, the suspect resisted arrest and as a result suffered fatal injuries.   WARNING:  the following illustration contains graphic and gruesome details not suitable for all audiences.  Discretion is advised before scrolling further.

 The subsequent investigation cleared the PI and crew of wrongdoing. The rat clearly resisted arrest and suffered the consequences.  Any questions should be directed to the legal department, handled by the Car Guys legal firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe. Counselor in charge is Helen Waite.  For more information on this investigation, go to Helen Waite.

     

Home Brewing

    “Eew!  It smells like a swimming pool in here.”

    It’s old winter’s song at our house.  Chlorine bleach sterilizes brewing equipment.

      Actually, I entertained the thought of not brewing this year, the first time in something like forty years.  It all began in the 1970’s when my sister-in-law gave me a subscription to Mother Earth News.

     I always thought Mother Earth News was a new hippie publication started in the 1960’s.  In reading the book The President and the Assassin, the story of President McKinley’s assassination, another sister-in-law gift, I find that Mother Earth News was around in the late 19^th century as a publication of anarchists.  I also discovered in reading that book that terrorism was alive and well in the late 19^th century, as some of the anarchists thought the only way to achieve the complete freedom they desired and a fair shake for the working man was to use violence.  So there were bombings and, of course, assassinations.  

      Back to brewing.  There was an ad in Mother Earth News for a complete brewing kit for something like $38 or something really cheap.  Not having learned the lesson about mail-order great deals, like the Ovaltine decoder in Christmas Story, I bit.  I got a six gallon brewing vessel complete with air tight lid and airlock, siphon tube and hose with clamp shut off, a can of malt extract, yeast, brewing sugar, plus enough brewing caps to bottle one batch. I thought the folks at home had a bottle capper, but it wasn’t to be found, so I had to spend another $14 for a capper (that had to be replaced in 2012).

      The first batch tasted quite good in comparison to the sour mash I remember from my youth when the folks brewed a batch or two.  (I think they used bread yeast, maybe.)  So I ordered a bunch more malt kits.  And I have been brewing ever since.  I have strayed to other suppliers in the intervening years, especially when the cost of shipping spiked, but I always end up ordering from Bierhaus International in Erie PA, where I started.

     For years, no one knew or cared that I brewed my own beer.  Then I had kids.  They went to school.  The word got out.

     When we first moved to this house, there was no heat in the basement.  So once I had a batch of beer bottled, I would set the bottles, usually 8 or 9 six packs, near the wood burning stove.  This warmed the beer up enough to reactivate the yeast which would carbonate the beer.

     One of the girls brought a friend home.  She asked if we were getting ready to have a party.  No, why?  Why did we have all that beer by the stove in the living room?  After a good laugh the Goodwife explained that she didn’t understand fully why, but that I brewed my own beer and I always warmed it by the stove for a week or two.  No, no party.

    It came to pass that for years after that incident, I had to answer two questions from my students, “Do you really brew your own beer?”  Stonewalling only increased the clamor, so, yes I do.  And then “When can we try some?”  Easy answer, when you turn 21.  To date, only two former students have ever shown up to collect on that promise.

     One other remarkable incident occurred some years ago.  Bierhaus always ships the cheapest way, sometime UPS, sometimes USPS.  One cold January day, we got a call from the post office.  We needed to come claim a damaged package.

     So we went one day after school to claim this damaged package.  The ladies rolled out this box that looked like it had been run over by a truck.  Leaking out of the seam of the damaged box was this fine, white powder.  Hmmmm.  “Did you call the cops?” I asked.

     They both laughed and said they thought about it, but then they looked at the addressee, and said, “No, probably not.”  So no cops. 

     Bierhaus had had a great sale on brewing sugar so I ordered 30 pounds.  When the truck ran over the box, or whatever happened, one of the ten-pound bags broke.  It turned out ok for me.  I reclaimed everything I could (cans of malt were dented but not broken) and somebody’s insurance replaced the whole order, so I got not quite double what I ordered.

      This so far mild winter led me to think I wouldn’t brew any this year.  I was keeping pretty busy outside.  Then January hit. 

     Dirt-blowing high winds finally turned to snow last week and high temperatures so far this February has been 24 degrees yesterday.  Inside sports like doing income tax and cleaning out the file cabinet, and defrosting the freezer have worn thin.  An email brought a price list; a phone call brought a box of ingredients.  So here we go.

     Clean and sterilize everything (“Eew!  It smells like a swimming pool. . . “)

                              Boil the water and mix in the syrupy malt extract, creating the wort.

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     Mix the wort, cold water, and yeast in the brewer.  Cap the brewer (the vessel, not the lad), install the airlock, wrap up and monitor for correct temperature.

 

     Just as there are all kinds of cooks and bakers, there are all kinds of home brewers.  Some brewers start from scratch, buying malted barley which they steep with a giant tea bag; malt, hops, yeast, all added at the correct time.  Other bakers crack open a Pillsbury tube of precut biscuit dough, slap them on a cookie sheet, throw them into the oven and call that baking.

      I’m in the Pillsbury school of brewers.  I buy malt in cans that is already hopped.  Boil the water, dump in the hopped malt syrup, boil a little more, and dump it in the brewing vessel.  Add the yeast when the temperature is just right—about 70 degrees.  Too hot kills the yeast, too cold and the yeast hibernates and increases the brewing time.  Thus the blanket, heating pad and thermometer.

       One week brewing time is just about right if proper temperature is maintained.  (Real brewers go by specific gravity checked with a hygrometer.)  The yeast will eat up all the sugar and give you thanks by peeing in your brewer. (Yeast secrete alcohol and CO2.)  Then the yeast will go dormant and sink to the bottom of the brewer.    

     Careful siphoning gets the beer out of the brewing vessel, leaving the dregs, and into the bottling bucket.  

  

      Meanwhile the dishwasher has been aiding and abetting by cleaning the bottles.  Then comes the hard work, filling, capping and stowing bottles.

      When the bottling is completed, clean the brewer with the same bleach used on the brewing bucket and siphoning equipment. (“Eew!  It smells like a swimming pool. . . .”) Boil up another batch.  A week later, bottle again.  Three or four batches usually provides a year’s worth of mostly good stuff.

      I was planning on trying a scratch batch using my chemical-free wheat, but the malting process is pretty involved.  You have to soak the grain until it almost sprouts, without letting any mold grow on it.  The deal-squelcher was when I read that the wheat should not have a lot of protein in it.  The protein causes problems.  This year’s crop had 14% protein, too high.

       Then you have to roast it to the right color.  Determining colors has always presented a problem for me.  Back to the Pillsbury recipe, at least for this year.     

      One of these years I will get a little barley seed, the two row or six row or whatever is the right kind for brewing, and grow some of my own.  I’ll fetch a few wild hops from the mountain property of friends.  That leaves the yeast problem.  I don’t know how to cultivate brewing yeast.  Still, it will be pretty close to totally home-grown.

Super Bowl Sunday

    The mercury (poisonous stuff) was not doing a ground hog imitation.  It wasn’t high enough to cast a shadow, even if the sun was up.  I removed an arm from under the futon and punched the snooze button on the radio.

     “. . . Super Bowl 48. . . .” the voice said.  XLVIII?  Really?  Super Bowl I wasn’t that long ago.  It doesn’t seem that long ago.  The upstart, junior American Football League challenged the old guard National Football League.

      It was one of those moments where you remember where you were and what you were doing at the time.  My brother was hauling me back to Greeley to begin winter quarter at Colorado State College.  Actually, winter quarter had begun almost ten days earlier.

       In those olden days, each quarter began with registration.  Every student stood in line to get into the building (Gunter Hall was it?) to go around to various tables to draw a key-punched card that got you into the class you wanted / needed. 

      There were lots of problems with the system.  The “good” classes with the popular or “easy” teachers, especially for general-ed classes, filled early.  Those who registered later got stuck with undesirable teachers.  Not everybody got to be first.  It was especially unfair to freshmen and sophomores who were trying to take required classes in the humanities, social studies and science.  (There were no math requirements at that time.) 

     You had a time slot during the day when you could get into try to draw your classes, based on the first letter of your last name.  To enter you had to show your student ID card.  Students, being human, tried to game the system, by sneaking in early, or borrowing someone else’s ID.  So that the Allens and Andersons didn’t always get to go first and get into all the good classes, and the Younts and Zapruders didn’t always get the hind teat, the alphabetical groupings were rotated so everyone had a chance to register first, and everyone had to suffer the consequences of going last.

     No matter.  It seemed that every student spent an hour or two standing in line, outdoors, waiting to get into register.  That was okay in September and in many Marches.  January registration was usually unokay.

      That particular year, it was bitterly cold and I stood in line in the biting cold for an hour or two.  When I got in, got my classes and returned home, I didn’t feel too well.  The next morning, I felt even worse.  When I looked in the mirror, my face was all swollen up. 

     I had the mumps.   

     I tried to tough it out for a couple of day with my brother as nurse maid.  But he had classes to go to.  Besides, who wants to be around someone with the mumps, probably contagious?  So Mom and Dad made the trip to Greeley and took me home to recover and see that I had proper care—meaning I got something to eat.  So instead of going to the first five or six meetings for all my classes, I was stretched out in bed.  The doctor warned me to remain prone as much as possible to keep the mumps from “going down.” 

     In my baby book (baby book?  I was a sophomore in college!) Mom crossed out “Mumps?” and reentered it with a correct date.  I figure now that other jaw-swelling episode was a bad tooth.  How are you to know that when you’re just a kid?

      So it came to pass that my brother came from Greeley in his old green ’52 Cadillac and we headed back to Greeley on that Sunday 48 years ago.  KOA radio was then “sports-talk” radio, and they carried important stuff then, like Broncos games and Denver Bears baseball.  And of course, the first Super Bowl.  So we listened to the Green Bay Packers, led by Bart Star and Paul Hornung, put down the upstart AFL represented by the Kansas City Chiefs with Lenny Dawson and Jan Stenereud.  I think. 

     It was 48 years ago.  I might have developed a few phantom memories in that time.  Anyway, listening to the game was little more than a way to pass the time.  What was really on my mind was the catch-up game ahead of me.  I was in a hole I never really dug out of.  I worked harder that quarter and got the worst grades of my college career. 

     I don’t remember too many other super bowls.  The one I do remember was when Denver squared off against the boastful-b******* Dallas Cowboys.  That must have been in the 70’s.  We lived in the Page Street house and I was beginning my career as a DIYer home owner.  I was wiring a light in our front door closet, one of the first electrical projects I took on by myself.

      From the closet I was working on, I could see the tv set sitting in a corner of the living room on the old “cob burner” stove that used to sit upstairs at the farm where the bathroom displaced the stove.  We struggled mightily to make the two mortgage payments in those days, and furniture was catch-as-catch-can.

      So the Broncos scored early and I thought, “Oh boy!  This is going to be easy.”  If the Broncos scored again, I don’t remember it.  I went on to finish the light and do something else (brew some beer?) after the Cowboys piled up a 30 point lead.

       I remember better times with the Broncos.  Like one Christmas Eve, we headed for Christmas Eve Church service listening to Bob Reuben (I think, or was it Bob Martin?) and Larry Zimmer bringing the fair and balanced (ha ha) description of the battle with Terry Bradshaw and his Steelers.  I remember Dad excusing himself to go have a smoke right after the service ended.  He rushed out to the blue Buick and switched on the radio to see how Charley Johnson and Riley Odoms (that might have been the right players) were faring against the Steel Curtain.  He had lots of company.  And by George, the Broncos won!  Did they go on to the Super Bowl? I don’t remember. 

      I was taking a brief nap in an easy chair in front of the tv when Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctioned.  “Dad, you missed seeing Janet Jackson’s boob,” my college-aged daughter said.  “Garn!  Why didn’t you wake me?”

      What teams played?  Do you remember?  That was ten years ago.

      Will the Denver streets and thoroughfares be treated to an orderly and lively traffic flow tomorrow February 3?  Or will it be snarling, horn-honking, hung-over commuters clogging the I70 and I25 corridors? 

      Que sera sera.  What’re really important are all the new ads we’ll get to see for the first time.  Not.  The media has already previewed a bunch of them.  I guess if you paid a few million to play an ad during the super bowl, you don’t mind getting a little more bang for your buck by getting your ad run free on the news.  But it seems a little like opening your Christmas presents early.

     Well, I have to go now.  We can’t ever host a Super Bowl party—our tv screen isn’t big enough.  I’ll go down to town, maybe sit in the same easy chair I napped in during the Janet Jackson display.  But I do have to take my share of snacks.

     My contribution will be guacamole, chips, and jalapeno poppers.  They are all within my culinary skills.  Mash some avocados, tomatoes, onions, a little garlic together.  Add some salt, a little mayonnaise, some lemon or lime juice to keep the avocado from turning colors. Carefully stick the avocado pit in the middle (supposedly helps preserve the avocado) and cover the thing with clear plastic wrap.

     Slice the jalapenos in half the long way.  Try your best to cut right through the stem so there’s a little handle on each of the peppers to it pick up with.  Take out the seeds and membranes.  Don’t rub your eyes during or after this exercise (a long time after).  Fill the cavity with cream cheese.  Wrap a slice of bacon around the whole thing.  Put them on a baking sheet and put into a 300 degree oven (hotter if you’re in a hurry) and check them in 30 minutes or so.  Just be sure the bacon is done.  If you place the cream cheese side down when you first place them on the baking sheet, you’ll need to roll them over in about 15 minutes.  The bacon will be done a little more consistently this way.

    Bon appetite!  May your Monday morning traffic be unsnarled.  Go Broncos!